The Violets of March

In her 20s, Emily Watson was on top of the world: she had a best-selling novel, a husband plucked from the pages of GQ, and a one-way ticket to happily ever after. Ten years later, the tide has turned on Emily's good fortune. So when her great-Aunt Bee invites her to spend the month of March on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, Emily accepts, longing to be healed by the sea. Researching her next book, Emily discovers a red velvet diary, dated 1943, whose contents reveal startling connections to her own life. The Violets of March announces Sarah Jio as a writer to watch.

The Bungalow

In the summer of 1942, 21 year-old Anne Calloway, newly engaged, sets off to serve in the Army Nurse Corps on the Pacific island of Bora Bora. More exhilarated by the adventure of a lifetime than she ever was by her predictable fiance, she is drawn to a mysterious soldier named Westry, and their friendship soon blossoms into hues as deep as the hibiscus flowers native to the island.

The Last Camellia: A Novel

On the eve of the Second World War, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes. More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate?

Goodnight June: A Novel

Goodnight Moon is an adored childhood classic, but its real origins are lost to history. In Goodnight June, Sarah Jio offers a suspenseful and heartfelt take on how the "great green room" might have come to be. June Andersen is professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby's estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children's bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s.

Morning Glory

In a Seattle houseboat community, the artistic spirit that has flourished since the 1950s may have ended one life, yet saved another. On Seattle's Lake Union floats Boat Street. The farthest slip on the dock holds a houseboat sided with weathered cedar shingles and trailing morning glory, the white flowering vine whose loveliness is deceiving. In the 1950s, Penny, newly Mrs. Dexter Wentworth, takes up residence, dreaming of fulfillment as the muse to a successful local artist destined for national renown.

The Olive Tree

It has been 24 years since a young Helena spent a magical holiday in Cyprus, where she fell in love for the first time. When the now crumbling house, Pandora, is left to her by her godfather, she returns to spend the summer there with her family. At the difficult age of 13, her son, Alex, is torn between protecting his mother and learning the truth about his real father. Both Helena and Alex know that life will never be the same once Pandora's secrets have been revealed.

Broken Angels

Imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto, Elsi discovers her mother's desperate attempt to end her pregnancy and comes face-to-face with the impossibility of their situation. Risking her own life, Elsi joins a resistance group to sabotage the regime. Blonde, blue-eyed Matilda is wrenched from her family in Romania and taken to Germany, where her captors attempt to mold her into the perfect Aryan child. Spirited and brave, she must inspire hope in the other stolen children to make her dreams of escape a reality.

New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline's world is forever changed when Hitler's army invades Poland in September 1939 - and then sets its sights on France. An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement.

The Lake House

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.

Truly Madly Guilty

In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don't say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.

Flight Patterns

Georgia Chambers has spent her life sifting through other people's pasts while trying to forget her own. But then her work as an expert on fine china - especially Limoges - requires her to return to the one place she swore she'd never revisit. It's been 13 years since Georgia left her family home on the coast of Florida, and nothing much has changed except that there are fewer oysters and more tourists.

It's 1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?

The Look of Love: A Novel

Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to literally see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her 29th birthday, she receives a card from the midwife who delivered her. Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her 30th birthday - or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn't believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed.

Florence Grace

Florrie Buckley is an orphan living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It's a hard existence, but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone. But when Florrie is 14, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family: the Graces.

The Other Daughter: A Novel

Raised in a poor yet genteel household, Rachel Woodley is working in France as a governess when she receives news that her mother has died suddenly. Grief stricken, she returns to the small town in England where she was raised to clear out the cottage...and finds a cutting from a London society magazine, with a photograph of her supposedly deceased father dated all of three month before. He's an earl, respected and influential, and he is standing with another daughter - his legitimate daughter.

The Rumor: A Novel

Nantucket writer Madeline King couldn't have picked a worse time to have writer's block. Her deadline is looming, her bills are piling up, and inspiration is in short supply. Madeline's best friend, Grace, is hard at work transforming her garden into the envy of the island with the help of a ruggedly handsome landscape architect. Before she realizes it, Grace is on the verge of a decision that will irrevocably change her life. Could Grace's crisis be Madeline's salvation?

Secrets of a Charmed Life

Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades...beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden--one that will test her convictions and her heart.

When I Found You

Nathan McCann thought he didn't want a family. But when he finds an abandoned newborn in the woods, he feels an inexplicable bond with the boy and starts to make plans to raise the child as his own - until the baby's grandmother steps forward to claim him. Nathan makes a request of her, though: to one day bring the boy to meet his rescuer.

A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.

The Ship of Brides

1946: World War II has ended and all over the world, young women are beginning to fulfill the promises made to the men they wed in wartime. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other war brides on an extraordinary voyage to England - aboard HMS Victoria, which still carries not just arms and aircraft but a thousand naval officers. Rules are strictly enforced, from the aircraft carrier’s captain down to the lowliest young deckhand. But the men and the brides will find their lives intertwined despite the Navy’s ironclad sanctions.

Here's to Us

Celebrity chef Deacon Thorpe has always been a force of nature with an insatiable appetite for life. But after that appetite contributes to Deacon's shocking death in his favorite place on earth, a ramshackle Nantucket summer cottage, his (messy, complicated) family is reeling. Now Deacon's three wives, his children, and his best friend gather on the island he loved to say farewell.

The Life We Bury

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

The Letter

The Number One Kindle best seller guaranteed to break your heart. Every so often a love story comes along to remind us that sometimes, in our darkest hour, hope shines a candle to light our way. Discover the Number One best seller that has captured thousands of hearts worldwide.... Tina Craig longs to escape her violent husband. She works all the hours God sends to save up enough money to leave him, also volunteering in a charity shop to avoid her unhappy home.

Wild Lavender

Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.

Publisher's Summary

Seattle, 1933: Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, good night and reluctantly leaves for work. She hates the night shift, but it’s the only way she can earn enough to keep destitution at bay. In the morning - even though it’s the second of May - a heavy snow is falling. Vera rushes to wake Daniel, but his bed is empty. His teddy bear lies outside in the snow.

Seattle, present day: On the second of May, Seattle Herald reporter Claire Aldridge awakens to another late-season snowstorm. Assigned to cover this "blackberry winter" and its predecessor decades earlier, Claire learns of Daniel’s unsolved abduction and vows to unearth the truth - only to discover that she and Vera are linked in unexpected ways.

The story has a creative and interesting plot surrounding a modern-day love story and a long-ago mystery and the way they become woven together by two freak spring snow storms. It's not great literature, but it would be a good read. I use "read" deliberately because listening to this story is a terrific disappointment.

I realize, as I am nearing the end, that I am so distracted by the narrator, that I find myself wondering, "How would that sound in my head if I were just reading it - would I give that phrase that emphasis? Would I feel differently about this character, this decision, this coincidence if I didn't have that voice in my head making every character sound as if they have a huge stick up their... er ... you know." When the focus of your listening experience becomes the narrator and not the story, something isn't working well.

I'm not sure what Ms. Sands was trying to do with this story, but her slow, deliberate, pronounce-every-syllable pacing becomes very distracting. Her tone is usually "emphatic" sounding and everyone (all her characters) speak with the same level of intensity about everything. Vera is exactly as intense about the hole in her shoe as she is about her missing child - like that.

I listened to samples from some of her other works, and she clearly doesn't narrate like this in all of them, and that leads me to wonder if this might have been the result of bad direction.

Perhaps people who like a highly emotionally-charged book, but don't care for literary-style writing. Perhaps someone with children. But, honestly, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone I know.

What was most disappointing about Sarah Jio’s story?

It was bothersome how everything just seemed to be such a coincidence, but each "twist" and "turn" was really predictable. The characters the protagonist meets are too convenient to helping her in her story. So much so that it became annoying.

When she tried to create a scene that was light-hearted, or funny, (which the protaganist's best friend was supposed to do) it came off as cheesy, clunky, and unnatural.

The cliche critique of the wealthy and entire theme of the book being poor vs. rich also got old. There are plenty of well-written books about the plight of the poor that don't spell it out so obviously and simply, citing each time a person with any money does something terrible, or would do something terrible, and contrasting it with a person with little means doing something wonderful or having a good heart. It's as if the author believes the reader is too stupid to pick up on what she is trying to say.

What didn’t you like about Tara Sands’s performance?

Her voice quavered the entire time, whether the characters were upset or scared, or happy (which, admittedly, was rare). She over-acted, which got pretty irritating. She definitely varied her voices & some might say she did it well, I just didn't care for her voices & theatrics.

From the cover design and the book's title, at first glance I thought this might be a romance novel, and had a moment of regret after purchase. However, I was pleasantly surprised, as the story evolves as relatively original and the author weaves the present and past in a very believable and relatable way, with past-to-present story lines that are somewhat similar or at least parallel.

Though romantic love is a theme, it's not the primary one, as the novel deals with larger issues like personal growth, motivation, the definition of true "success", and how we handle life's curve balls; how we play the hand we're given.

I appreciated the main character's perspective from an in-law attached to a high-profile and wealthy family, as many on the outside can think that once you marry into wealth and influence your life is solved. But that's not always the case, and there are downsides.The protagonist struggles to find her own way, establish herself independently of her husband's powerful and prestigious family. She does manage to succeed at this and in the end becomes more than just another appendage to a family with far-reaching power and influence.

I think the plot trajectory is clever, well-conceived and somewhat original. I am sure there are other novels with a similar story but I haven't encountered them, so to me this narrative has legs beyond what at first seems to be simply about a reporter just trying to find a story. And it's all deftly mixed in with the specter of a recent personal tragedy that adds color and depth.

I am only giving this book 4 out of 5, however, because the ending was resolved for me way before the last few chapters, and those sections, seeming like filler, just dragged annoyingly on and on. This part didn't seem to fit - perhaps added as a recommendation from an editor, because the primary reveal was accomplished well in advance of the final chapters.

Retired CFO, Army wife, Mom of five, Grandma of six, two sons who served in combat, love to read books that reflect my values and faith, love mysteries, historical, military stories, and books that don't waste my time . . . if it doesn't have an ending that was worth the wait, I'm not a happy camper.

This is a beautifully written story, very personal . . . which I easily related to . . . if you have had the privilege to have grown up with or known family members who went through the Great Depression, you will appreciate this audio book. My mother-in-law grew up during the depression. She was the most unassuming, gentle, giving person I have ever known. She never went past third grade, because she had to leave her family, her mother, father and seven siblings to go to the city and keep house . . . cook and clean for a wealthy family. And she was never, ever bitter. Family was everything to her. This book tells about a young single mother who has to leave her three year old son in bed asleep at night, while she goes to work cleaning motel rooms. The poverty during the 1930's is absolutely unimaginable to our society today. But I assure you, it was real. This is a complex story of the haves and the have nots . . . of those who abuse their power . . . and those, who by the grace of God, USE their power and money for good. It was then . . . and is now . . . a choice. The story goes back and forth between the '30s and today, and weaves a beautiful tale of love, sadness, mistakes, forgiveness and hope.

This was as unique a plot as I've seen in a long time, and I liked the shifts from present to past, but the it would have been much stronger without the ungainly coincidences. Good character development and good sense of the lives of the poor in the 1930s. Worth the time.

YET AGAIN a somewhat promising idea turns out to be a sappy, badly written book. UGH. It was so flat and not realistic at all; people don’t speak that way in real life! Not people you’d want to spend time with anyway… it struck me as what a child’s idea is of how grown-ups talk.

I kept reading because I am stubborn about finishing books, and I always hope that despite the eye-rolling, predictable, cliché and banal dialogue – there might be a redeeming story buried down deep in there somewhere!! But it was a lot of sappy drama to slog through – barely worth it.

I concede that perhaps it was the narrator that ruined it for me. Her overly-dramatic over-acted performance was just too much.

At the risk of sounding obnoxious, I would qualify this book as a “Beach Read”. Lower your standards. Think: light & fluffy and you might not be as disappointed.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I don't think this particular audiobook was time well spent - although I connected with the characters and was mildly interesting in the dual plot (one happening in the 30s, one present day), I found the plot dragged and the writing was cliched and a little sappy. Although the title speaks of Winter, my feeling is this a pleasant beach read at best....if you have the patience.

The over-enunciating, over emphatic narrator practically ruined this story for me. Add that to the rather predictable, formula-driven plot and this became an average if not less than average read at best. Still, there was something captivating about the plot. . . pitting poor against wealthy and overcoming the ravages of time to open old memories and uncover new evidence. So I'll give it a weak, wavering one-thumbs-up.